150 YEARS AGO: Citing enfeebled health, governor apologizes for lack of detailed work on report

Rudi Keller

Thursday

Jan 30, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2014 at 1:00 PM

ST. LOUIS — Gov. Hamilton Gamble showed he was attending to duty but apologized that his work was not as detailed as it should be in a message to the General Assembly.

He forwarded Adjutant General John Gray’s annual report along with the message. “My enfeebled health has prevented me from giving the report that careful examination which it would otherwise have received at my hands,” Gamble wrote. “I shall not, therefore, make any further recommendations respecting it, trusting that the report will receive from you the consideration which its importance demands.”

Gamble was bedridden at his St. Louis home, weakened by pneumonia that set in after an operation on his broken right arm.

Gray pointed out several problems with the militia laws. Every man from 18 to 45 years old was required to enroll.

Exemptions could be purchased for $30 plus a tax of 1 percent of the value of personal and real property.

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JEFFERSON CITY — Central Missouri lawmakers split along familiar conservative-Radical lines in a key vote on the bill calling a new State Convention as the House voted 60-57 to put off the election for delegates until November.

The 11-member Central Missouri delegation provided nine votes for the majority: Joseph Davis of Howard County, James Harrison of Audrain County, William Jackson and M.W. Robinson of Callaway County, George Quinn of Randolph County, James Sappington of Moniteau County, William Slade and William Todd of Boone County and William Wear of Cooper County. William Curry of Cole County and Harvey Bunce of Cooper County voted against the November election date.

Radicals wanted a quick convention to emancipate slaves and impose new restrictions on voting. They narrowly lost a November campaign for control of the Missouri Supreme Court.

Under the rules in place, anyone who had renounced Confederate allegiance and had not overtly acted in support of the rebellion since Dec. 17, 1861, was eligible to vote. Radicals wanted to exclude that group to secure a better chance of winning November’s statewide elections.

Despite the defeat, Rep. Charles Johnson moved to cut off debate immediately after the vote. The House then voted 80-34 in favor of the convention bill, ending two weeks of debate. On the final vote, Central Missouri lawmakers remained locked into their blocs. Those who voted for the later delegate election voted against the bill while Bunce and Curry, who opposed the November election, supported the bill.

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BOONVILLE — Boone County Court Judge C.W. Sombart received 20 gallons of brandy seized during a search for illicit liquor. Lt. Franklin Swope, who had seized the liquor 11 days earlier, delivered it to Sombart’s store.

During the search, Swope found a barrel of Boone County whiskey owned by Sgt. Charles Roby stored on Sombart’s premises. Roby purchased the whiskey from D.C. Lyonberger and paid Sombart $1 to store it for him. Under martial law restrictions, it was illegal to sell liquor to enlisted soldiers.

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LITTLE ROCK — Brig. Gen. Mosby Parsons “thinks he is doing well” in Confederate service, although he “has very sanguine hopes of the success of the rebellion,” a correspondent wrote to the St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican.

The article, based on an interview with an unnamed rebel officer “who has abandoned rebellion forever,” detailed the activities of several leading Missourians who had been fighting for the South since the early days of the war. Parsons, of Jefferson City, “seems at least to be well satisfied with things as they are,” the correspondent wrote. “He rides fine horses, dresses in fine clothes, sent him from St. Louis.”

Maj. Henry Clark of Boonville, postmaster from 1846 to 1861, was the inspector general for Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s division, the Republican reported. He “is regarded as a splendid officer,” the newspaper reported.

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